> Anyone planning on putting them back in? Looking through the source it
> looks like most of it is there, just missing the coded to create tables
> that support that type. I am working on it, but if someone else is too
> I would love to work together.
There is a thread on this topic in the Cloudscape devel list. My summary
of the thread is that user defined types were removed by IBM very
recently on the theory that they are not portable. Cloudscape was being
positioned as a stepping stone to enterprise DBMS products, so it should
only implement standard types.
I find that explanation flawed on a number of counts.
1) Anyone using User Defined Types knows they are not portable.
2) There is a growing list of important non-standard functionality that
needs user defined types (eg spatial).
3) Almost all "Enterprise" products implement User Defined Types at some
level (to support item 2).
4) Derby is a real piece of software in its own right, and many of us
want it to do non-standard things.
I strongly suspect that if User Defined Types are kept out of Derby then
the code base will be used by a new project that wants them in. Putting
them back into Derby sounds like a much better plan.
Peter Yuill